Generally sausage links are produced by metering quantities of a sausage filling material through a tube over which a length of sausage casing is drawn to fill the sausage casing upstream of a twisted-off portion or constriction of the casing. Means are provided to thereupon twist off a filled section of the sausage casing, thereby terminating a link and preparing the sausage casing to receive another quantity or portion of the sausage filling material. The resulting sausage chain or link chain thus consists of a plurality of sausage links in the common casing, separated by twisted-off portions or constrictions.
It has been proposed to engage the chain of sausage links and to suspend the same at constrictions between the sausage links in loops, each loop having a predetermined number of sausage links.
In an apparatus for this purpose (see German published application DT-OS 1 432 460) the sausage chain passes between a pair of opposite feed conveyor chains which have fingers gripping between the sausage links at the constrictions. At the downstream side of these chains, a tubular pickup device is provided which is rotatable about a slightly downwardly inclined axis and is driven synchronously with the feed of the sausage chain. At the discharge side of this pickup, a spiral-shaped taper is provided toward a rod cage which engages the sausage chain and suspends the same in loops. The distance between the discharge end of the conveyor chains from the rotating axis of the pickup and the rotating speed are determined in dependence upon the conveyor speed so that, for each revolution of the pickup member, a portion of the chain with a predetermined number of sausage links is engaged in the form of individual loops and deposited on hooks of a conveyor which is also synchronized with the pickup rotation.
A disadvantage of this system is that the entire apparatus must be constructed to accommodate a particular sausage link and thickness and a particular number of links for each loop. The speed at which the apparatus operates is also limited since the sausage chain must be advanced to the pickup tube over relatively long distances so that the sausage chain is subjected to considerable stress. The sausages are subjected to centrifugal force and may be swung so strongly outwardly that they are subjected to bending, breaking and kinking.
The stresses on the sausage casing are so great with these earlier systems that it is only possible to use relatively thick synthetic-resin sausage casing materials if high operating rates are desired. Thin or sensitive sausage casing materials cannot be used or can be used only with considerable disadvantage with respect to the operating speed and the danger to the sausage casing material.
Natural casing materials are practically excluded from consideration because of their limited stability, the nonuniformity in diameter and length, etc. Another disadvantage of the earlier device is that a pairwise suspension of the sausage links is only possible when the lengths of sausage links is relatively great.
In another conventional device, in which the sausage chain is fed from between two chains with fingers engaging between the links, a pair of disks are provided for rotation concentrically with the feed axis of the sausage chain and are connected with a screw-shaped pickup which runs at a constant distance from the common axis from the periphery of a first disk to a suspension disk, upon which the loops of sausage are deposited. The loops are carried by downwardly inclined suspending rods which further advance the sausage loops.
Here again a centrifugal force is developed which detrimentally affects the sausage links, the screw-like member and the edges of the hook structures applying significant stress to the sausages. In practice it is found that this apparatus cannot operate at the high speeds of sausage production which have become common with the newest of sausage-producing machines.